Neck guard sales jump after Sask. hockey player slashed by skate
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More adult players are now investing in the protective equipment.
Kerri Einarson pulled off the three-peat Sunday.
Einarson and her Team Canada entry of Val Sweeting, Shannon Birchard and Briane Meilleur beat Northern Ontario’s Krista McCarville 9-6 to win their third straight Scotties Tournament of Hearts title.
The foursome based in Gimli, Man., is the fourth team to win three straight Canadian women’s curling championships, but the first since Jennifer Jones (2008-10).
The Einarson team will represent Canada at the world women’s championship, March 19-27 in Prince George, B.C. That was to be the site of the 2020 world tournament, but it was cancelled due to COVID.
Einarson was eliminated by Sweden in the qualification round of the playoffs at the 2021 world championship.
McCarville and her Thunder Bay-based team of Kendra Lilly, Ashley Sippala and Sarah Potts also won silver in 2016.
Leading 3-2 after four ends of Sunday’s final in Thunder Bay, Einarson scored three in the fifth to take a 6-2 lead.
After McCarville scored two in the sixth to cut the lead to two, Einarson took one in the seventh. McCarville replied with a deuce in the eighth to make it 7-6 before Einarson scored one in the ninth.
The Team Canada skip thought she had a second counter biting the house in that end, but a measurement determined the rock was not on the rings and Einarson had to settle for one.
In the 10th, Einarson buried a rock on the button and it stayed right there. McCarville tried a raise takeout with her final rock in hopes of scoring two, but it didn’t dislodge Einarson’s counter and Team Canada stole one.
Earlier Sunday, Einarson scored two in each of the first, seventh and ninth ends en route to an 8-4 victory over New Brunswick’s Andrea Crawford in the semifinal.
Einarson’s squad had gone 8-0 in the round-robin portion of the tournament, but lost its first playoff game.
The two-time defending champions then had to win three in a row to win the championship — and they did just that, knocking off Tracy Fleury’s Wild Card #1 team in the 3-4 Page playoff game, Crawford in the semifinal and McCarville in the final.